


devotionals

by sparxwrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, Begging, Blasphemy, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Underage Sex, Cunnilingus, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, F/F, F/M, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Oral Sex, Public Humiliation, Service Kink, Sex Work, Sexual Experimentation, Slurs, Smoking, Teacher-Student Relationship, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 14:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12060801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: "The first time you fall to your knees, you're (fourteen; fifteen; sixteen; seventeen; eighteen; nineteen; twenty; twenty-one), and (that's just the way things are in the Herd; it's for a boy; it's for Her; it's for enough money to eat for the next few days; you don't really know why; it's at the foot of your tutor's desk; it feels like blasphemy; it's for the man that saved your life)."A history of sexual firsts for Vox Machina, told from their knees.





	devotionals

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re fourteen, and that’s just the way things are in the Herd.

For a goliath, you’re full-grown – or near to, anyways. For the Herd, you’re old enough to be responsible for the dumb shit you do, for the mistakes you make. And, oh _boy,_ have you made a mistake, fucked up big time. You picked a fight, with someone stronger than you and older than you and more cunning than you, and you made the stupid fucking mistake of _losing_.

So this is how it goes, anyways. You get beaten for your troubles, boxed ears and a split lip and a bloody nose, and you scowl through it anyways, huffing and snorting and growling in anger even as he’s got you on your knees with a casual hand around your throat. You could throw him off, pretty easy. His grip isn’t that strong. You could break it, surge up, smash his teeth in and take your chances with a second round – though you don’t like the odds on that, even _with_ the element of surprise.

Of course, you’d get worse than a beating and a bit of public humiliation for trying to wriggle out of your punishment. For refusing to grit your teeth, and square your shoulders, and _take it like a fucking man_.

So you square up on your knees, and hold your breath, and don’t bother to keep your teeth tucked behind your lips – and growl the whole fucking time, until the guy is done. You stare into his eyes, ignore the jeers and laughter of those who’ve stopped to watch your humiliation, and silently promise both him and yourself that you’re going to pay him back for this, some day. Some day soon.

And then, you’re not going to lose. Then you’re not going to stop fucking punching ‘til he’s dead, neither.

-

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re fifteen, and it’s for a boy.

He’s maybe a year older than you, pale hair and grey eyes and cheekbones sharp enough you think you could cut yourself on them, if you wanted to. And you _do_ kind of want to, if you’re being honest with yourself – which, for once, you are.

You’ve wanted to drop to your knees for him for as long as you’ve known him; about six weeks, then. Young, stupid, starved for affection and desperate for approval, you trail after him, hang off his every smile and kind word. He’s the only person in this entire shithole of a city that treats you like a person, and you’d suck his cock for just a gentle hand in your hair and a grateful moan.

When he gives you just that opportunity, you don’t stop to ask questions.

You’re old enough to know how this works – kiss the tip, open your mouth, lick and suck, hollow your cheeks but mind the teeth – but not old enough to how this _works_. Not old enough to know how, the next day, he’ll ignore you, look right through you as though you don’t exist. How he’ll call you _faggot_ and _half-breed_ and _blunt-ear_ , shoulder past you as his friends laugh. You’ll watch him with hurt and a lost, aching confusion, and wonder what you did wrong.

You’re not in love – just inexperienced, and inquisitive – but the slurs he’ll hurl at you will break your heart, all the same.

-

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re sixteen, and it’s for Her.

You’re begging, humiliatingly – inelegantly, you’ve not had enough practice at this yet but _oh_ , by the end of the week you will have – for Her not to put you back on her table. You’ll do _anything_ , you promise, grovelling, the tears streaking down your cheeks, cutting trails through the dried blood from yesterday’s time spent under Her knives. _Anything_.

_Anything?_ She asks, and smiles that sharp, terrifying smile of Hers. You hesitate, and She raises an eyebrow, reaching for Her heavy set of leather-wrapped tools and making to unroll them.

You nod, despite the way it makes your vision swim.

When She lifts up her skirts to force your head under them, you don’t fight Her, though you’re shaking with fear and confusion and uncertainty. She grips you by the tufts of hair She has yet to rip out or burn off your scalp, and hauls you between Her legs, forces your face up against Her and tilts your head back at an angle that makes your neck ache and your breath rasp wetly in your throat. It’s still better, though, you tell yourself, through your panic. It’s still better than the table.

Of course, She still straps you to the table, in the end. You should have known better than to trust Her, and you had, but you’d _hoped_ , desperately, pathetically… She waits for you to finish or, more accurately, for _Herself_ to finish, and then hauls your head out from under Her skirts whilst Her thighs still shake and drags you sobbing and struggling to Her workbench. 

When She sets you screaming again, it’s with the taste of Her on your tongue.

-

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re seventeen, and it’s for enough money to eat for the next few days.

It makes your chest tighten with fear to even think about doing this – you know what can happen to women who do this, know what the men who buy their services are capable of. But you’re _desperate_. Your brother thieves well enough, now, having gotten his hand and his eye in with only minimal beatings from the city guards, but it’s not _enough_. A handful of coins from a handful of pockets each day barely keeps them with a roof over their head, after he’s paid his tithe to the Clasp.

The hunger digging claws into your stomach, the pale, drawn look on your brother’s face, the way you can feel your bear’s ribs through his thick coat of fur – these are the things that eventually drive you to action. 

The man you find is not unkind, exactly, but he ensures he gets his money’s worth. By the time he’s done, your knees are scraped, throat raw, scalp aching from the hands tugging at her hair. It’s half pulled out of your braid, a tangled mess where his fingers curled into it, and you’re not sure how you’ll explain the state you’re in to your brother, but that’s the least of your concerns right now.

Right now, your concerns are hopefully getting _paid_ , instead of getting beaten, or worse. It’s almost a relief when the man tosses a handful of coins at your feet after he’s sorted himself out, when he walks away, without another look at you now that you’ve served your purpose. You feel _used_ , feel crawling-uncomfortable and almost tearful – but you have the money, hurriedly picked from the cracks in the back-alley pavement, and that’s all that matters. _That’s all that matters_.

When you get back to the shithole inn you call home right now, a few coppers in your pocket and a loaf of bread in you hand, you can’t quite look your brother in the eye.

-

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re eighteen, and you don’t really know why.

Boredom, maybe? Curiosity, perhaps? The faint, blushing kind of warmth that inexpert flattery brings when you’re young and awkward and inexperienced? None of them seem quite right but, whatever it is, it’s certainly not _love_ , or even lust.

A distraction, perhaps. That sounds closer to the truth.

The girl’s sweet enough, really, almost as awkward as you and definitely as inexperienced. You’re both fumbling, giggling, all hesitant, wandering hands and hair in your eyes and dry mouths as you take in each new expanse of skin to be revealed. It’s foreign, and exciting, and you’ve got little to guide the two of you other than your basic knowledges of biology and your instincts.

As it turns out, your instincts serve you fairly well.

It’s not as though you’re magically some kind of expert at this, but you make her squeal whilst you’re on your knees nonetheless, make her thighs shake and tighten around your head when you find the right places to touch. What you lack in knowledge, you make up for in nervous enthusiasm – or at least you think you do, _hope_ you do, given the noises she makes from above you and the way she clutches at your hair.

It’s _fun_ , in an odd sort of way, the little pocket of shared intimacy you build around yourselves as you explore each others’ bodies.

You lie in your bed afterwards, curled against her side, and remind yourself that you can’t get attached. Your Aramente is coming, soon. You know what happened to your mother. It wouldn’t be fair.

-

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re nineteen, and it’s at the foot of your tutor’s desk, and at the feet of your tutor.

He’s luminous above you, radiant and gorgeous and angelic and all those other poetic, honeyed words that never seem to trip off your tongue quite right. They sound like liquid love when penned by bards and writers, but clumsy and foolish when you try to speak them aloud, and it _frustrates_ you every time. Even so – there really is no other way to describe him.

When you look up at him, through the pale light of your eyelashes, he’s haloed in gold. His eyes are half-lidded, and his lips are parted, pinked and spilling poetry that would make even the gods envious. You can’t quite believe that you’re allowed this, that you _have_ this, even for a little while. It seems a gift too precious for you, least-loved by your father and stutteringly nervous as you are.

And yet, somehow, this man – this beautiful, brilliant man – has chosen you to place his affections in. Has chosen _you_ to kiss, to hold, to share his soul with. It’s breathtaking, overwhelming and frankly rather awe-inspiring… 

And you know your father would murder him, if he ever found out. It weighs on your mind every time you press your lips to his, every time you hold hands on a walk in a secluded section of the gardens. Though he boldly proclaims that the danger was worth it, that he would risk far worse than death for the promise of your embrace, you cannot help but fear for him.

Even as you lean into this moment, bathed in the gold of a single, perfect afternoon, even as he sings your praises above you in melodic, archaic Elvish and a litany of moans… you know this cannot last.

-

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re twenty, and it feels like blasphemy.

Your grandpa’s out, as is your little – or big – brother, but you lock your room’s door behind you and the young woman you’ve brought home even so. You’re both laughing-tipsy in the flickering candles and the starlight streaming in through the window, and she’s gorgeous, human and twice your height and impossibly elegant. Her eyes are dark, almond-shaped, liquid, and they _burn_ as she drags you down onto your bed to kiss your mouth wet and hard.

It doesn’t take long to move from kissing to touching, and from touching to grasping, and from grasping to _writhing_. Your bodies move against one another on the sheets, sinuous and sweat-sheened, your cries and soft moans rising in a desperate, hushed harmony.

She ends up with her legs hung off the edge of the bed and you between them, her calling your name to the ceiling like a prayer, a litany. You have no breath, your mouth too occupied, to respond with your words – but your body thrills to her voice nonetheless, Her praise deifies you, ascends you above your uncertain, timid mortal self into something new, something _more_. You _revel_ in it, in the power of it, and hunger for more, licking into her with all the desperation of a woman long-starved.

You think you feel Her watching your ritual, this profane worship of another with tongue and fingers, sweat and sex. You can’t seem to bring yourself to care.

-

The first time you fall to your knees, you’re twenty-one, and it’s for the man that saved your life.

He looks amused, at first, when you come to his rooms one night a few weeks after he took you in. It’s obvious what you’re here for, given the lateness of the hour and the nerves that must be written all over your face, but he doesn’t turn you away. He lets you settle down between his lazily-spread legs where he’s sprawled in an over-plush armchair, offers you a pillow to cushion your knees – and informs you gently that you don’t have to do this between slow puffs on the pungent cigar he’s smoking.

You tell him you _want_ to, and you mean it. He saved you, though he might not know it, saved your life and saved you from yourself. This seems like the least you can do.

He shrugs, nods in a magnanimous sort of way, and gestures to the buttons on his trousers, which you take as permission enough. Whilst you struggle with his trousers, with your own nerves and your lack of experience by way of half-orcs’ anatomy and the fairly obvious size difference, he stays reclined easily in his chair. Watching you, quiet and still, apparently as unconcerned as you are twitchy.

The cigar never leaves his lips, but he does settle the hand not holding it atop your head, petting your hair gently as you get to work. When you glance up at him, he’s smiling down at you, and there’s a certain warmth to the curve of his lips as he blows out a cloud of yellowish smoke. You take it as encouragement, as a kindness. As a benediction, of sorts.

If, by the time you’re done and pressing your forehead against his thigh to catch your breath, there are tears in your eyes… well. He’s kind enough to not mention them.

**Author's Note:**

> find me @sparxwrites on tumblr.


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